The day we can no longer see it in space/analysis

One of the most poignant scenes Wally, the apocalyptic Disney movie Starring a cute and funny garbage compactor robot, on a planet abandoned by humans, mired in waste and wars that ended in the destruction of the environment, is the one in which the ship carrying Eva, Wally’s “friend”, leaves Earth heading for the space cruiser where the humans who managed to escape from the catastrophe are located .

While passing through the atmosphere, the ship breaks apart thick layer of space junk, Millions of satellites covering the planet in geostationary orbits.

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The picture that everything seems to point to would not be far from reality and the near future: we are filling our atmosphere with thousands of satellites, apparently without much control, an error that will soon affect us and which is already dangerous. Warnings.

He was the first to cry out to Heaven (what an irony) Astronomers: About three years ago they warned about the dangerous impact of light pollution They are created by more than 8,000 instruments orbiting the planet today, at various altitudes, to study outer space.

The International Astronomical Union has warned that about seven percent of Hubble telescope observations, for example, are failures.

And the European Space Agency recalled, to embody the seriousness of the situation, the case of observing a supposed galaxy in 2020, believed to be “closest to the Big Bang,” which turned out to be a complete fiasco due to camouflage caused by a satellite.

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Because it’s not just about science: What happens if, because of these unsupervised satellites, we cannot study or miscalculate a meteorite potentially dangerous for the planet?

The complication of this case is that there is no solution in sight. It is expected that by the end of this decade we will have 100,000 satellites orbiting the planet.

Not only will Elon Musk’s Starlink be the cause of the problem, but others like Amazon, OneWeb, and who knows which of them will be joining our skies will cover our skies with devices with solar panels, creating visual pollution.

Obviously, satellites are important and necessary for communication and digitization of the economy, however A global charter is required for the effective control and management of its use, waste, recycling and control, Or we will be left, as in Wally, without ever being able to see the stars.

Jose Carlos Garcia R.

Media editor

In X: @JoseCarlostecno